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Richt tells Rotary Club that Bulldogs are ready for season

Georgia head football coach Mark Richt cracks a smile while speaking with a member of the media during the 11th Annual Peach State Pigskin Preview Tuesday, June 12, 2012, at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in Macon, Ga. (AP Photo/The Telegraph, Jason Vorhees)

With just a few weeks before his team opens the 2012 season, Mark Richt on Wednesday made his semi-regular appearance before the Athens Rotary Club and said the Bulldogs were ready to play, at least in terms of motivation.

“We’re 17 days from kickoff and I wish it were this weekend, quite frankly,” said Richt before a packed house at the Holiday Inn downtown. “We’ve broken camp and everybody has started classes, so now we’re just waiting for the game.”

As he enters his 12th season at the University of Georgia, Richt spoke of the momentum that has been bubbling since January and stressed the importance of not peaking too soon.

“It’s a time when you can actually go backwards in your preparation if you decide it’s Groundhog Day, or it’s boring, or you decide, ‘I’m just putting in time and waiting for the opportunity to play,’” he said. “One of our greatest challenges as coaches is to build on what has been done throughout the year. ... I feel really good where we’re at right now, so our biggest challenge is to keep them going, to keep them getting better and motivated.”

Richt spent most of his time on the dais Wednesday fielding questions, including several recruiting queries, of which he can only speak in general terms per NCAA guidelines. The veteran coach did assent that UGA could sign as many as 35 recruits in the coming cycle.

“We could sign as many as 34 or 35 players” he said. “The NCAA says you can sign 25 (recruits) in any given year, and you’ve got to stay under 85 (scholarships).”

When asked if there was a particular game circled in red on the Bulldogs’ calendar, Richt smiled and said, “I would never tell you. It’s just motivation for the other team.”

But he did say some unnamed games are “personal.”

“Over the years, it has become more personal,” he said. “I was at FSU for 15 years and ... I wasn’t mad at anybody. We were winning. Now that I’ve been in this league for 11 seasons of football, it gets personal.”